TAMPA – So they gave the Super Bowl MVP award to Ray Lewis, a call so predictable you could have made it before the game, assuming the Ravens beat the Giants.

And they did, convincingly, but the player most responsible for Baltimore’s 34-7 win wore not the uniform of the victor, but of the vanquished.

This was a Super Bowl decided not by a hero, because there really wasn’t one.

This one was decided by a goat.

In a game dominated on the scoreboard by the Ravens, the player who made the biggest impact on the field was a Giant.

The key Giant, in fact.

As far as the Ravens are concerned, their Most Valuable Player in Super Bowl XXXV was Kerry Collins.

No player on the field did more to advance the cause of the Ravens than Collins, nor did any player do more to advance the football for them.

Today, Collins goes down in Super Bowl lore, but the not the way he hoped, nor the way his team needed him to.

Now, Collins shares a Super Bowl record – four interceptions, one returned 29 yards for a back-breaking touchdown by Duane Starks in the third quarter on a pass so bad no Giant could catch it, and so easy any hack in the press box could have picked it standing in the same spot Starks found himself in.

And if not for an outstanding defensive play by Tiki Barber on a fourth-quarter pass that was headed for the breadbasket of Raven safety Kim Herring, this morning Collins would stand alone atop the heap of Super Bowl futility.

Just two weeks removed from his best game as a professional, his “redemption” performance against the Vikings in the NFC Championship game, Collins followed up with perhaps the worst night a Super Bowl quarterback has ever had.

Consider him once again officially unredeemed, at least as a player.

The numbers – 39 attempts, 15 completions, 112 measly yards and nothing longer than a 19-yarder that Amani Toomer had to perform the contortions of a Yogi to haul in – don’t even begin to tell the story of Collins’ ineffectiveness.

In fact, the play that told the story of Collins’ Super Bowl wasn’t even a pass, but a first-quarter scramble that evaporated into a slide some 10 yards short of a first down – and five yards short of any Raven defender.

That play showed that on this night, Collins wasn’t just playing poorly.

It looked as if he was also playing scared.

Not so much scared of the Ravens, who are scary in themselves, but of the pressure to perform well in the game he simply could not afford to screw up.

Last night, that was too much to ask from Collins.

To his credit, Collins beat alcoholism and he beat down the scorn of people who considered him dumb, or soft, or racist. He won over his teammates this season and he won over the New York media, neither of which was an easy task.

But he still hasn’t won the game he needs to win to shed the last of the doubts about Kerry Collins.

The sad reality is, the win over the Vikings was no longer worth a damn as soon as the ball was kicked off to begin the Super Bowl.

And unfortunately, neither was Collins.

Collins, of course, was not alone among his teammates in showing up at the Super Bowl seemingly unprepared to play at the level required to win the game, or at least make a respectable showing.

The offensive line let Collins down a little, and Barber started the game looking as frightened as if he had just seen Ray Lewis and his posse coming out of a nightclub.

Sean Payton’s game plan this week isn’t going to be immortalized in song, and now that he’s 0-for-5 on Super Bowl Sundays, maybe it is time for Glenn Parker to investigate the possibility that the problem is him.

And that brings us to Jason Sehorn, who last night couldn’t cover a baby with a blanket.

Four times, three different receivers left Sehorn in the dust. He got roasted twice in the first quarter alone, although thanks to the presence of Trent Dilfer in the Ravens’ offense, who did his best to keep the Giants in the game, he only paid for it once, on Brandon Stokely’s 38-yard TD catch eight minutes into the game.

Facing a defense as ferocious and ball-hungry as the Ravens’, that early seven-point lead might just as well have been 100.

But then, something funny began to happen.

Cracks began to appear in the new Purple People Eaters. The self-proclaimed Greatest Defense of All Time, shredded for 481 yards passing by the Jets, of all teams, started to show how it could be done.

But Collins couldn’t do it.

Even before the Ravens had put an ounce of physical pressure on Collins, he already seemed whipped by the emotional pressure.

From the first series of the game, Collins played as if he were spooked.

Spooked by the reputation of the Ravens, at first, and later, spooked by the reality of trying to move the ball against them.

When Collins wasn’t throwing at the wrong jerseys or at his own receivers’ backs, he was throwing at mirages. Sometimes, he missed by inches, such as when he just missed Ike Hilliard in the end zone late in the first quarter, when it was still a game.

Other times, he missed by wider margins than you would think it was possible for a professional quarterback to miss by.

And when he was forced to make a decision, Collins invariably made the wrong one.

The pass he tried to force to Hilliard in the end zone between two defenders was not only a foolish choice, but an unnecessary one.

At the time, the Giants had a first-and-10 at the Baltimore 29 with 63 seconds left in the half and a very surmountable 10-0 deficit on the board. Barber had just exploited a Ravens’ blitz for 27 yards on a draw play. Worst of all, while Collins was staring down Herring and Chris McAlister, Barber was floating all alone about eight yards out from the line of scrimmage.

But the pressure persuaded Collins to try to get it all in one shot. Instead, that was probably the play that slammed the coffin shut on the Giants’ hopes for a comeback.

There were other knives in the Giants’ heart – Jermaine Lewis’ 84-yard kickoff return for a touchdown that negated Ron Dixon’s 97-yard TD return on the previous kickoff, and, especially, Jessie Armstead’s interception return for a second-quarter touchdown that was wiped out by a holding penalty on Keith Hamilton that only one guy in the park seemed to see.

But teams that get into trouble, even great teams – especially great teams – look to the quarterback to get them out of it.

Collins, who for most of the season was asked simply not to lose the game, last night found himself absolutely unqualified to win it.